Apple By Elias Rafaie The success of our company can be based off our leading-edge products we have recently released. The decision to introduce a new smartphone at some of the biggest shopping times every year has led to a substantial increase in our sales, especially in the fourth quarter. The times known as “back-to-school shopping and black Friday” can be praised primarily for our boosted sales. Based on the graph provided below, we can see just how different our sales are throughout the quarters and how much of a gap there is between us and our competitors. As you can see sales still surpass our other competitors through the year but during those key times is when it truly counts. Using the HHI method, we can determine the Market Structure (7^2 +3^2+9^2+16^2+65^2 = 4620). Adding all our products together would statistically put us at a lower percentage then some of our competitors but what we lack in sales, we make up in customer service. We demonstrate two forms of the market structure here, both oligopoly for smart phones and a monopolistic competition for our branded computers. Our biggest challenge would be figuring out how to constantly upgrade the hardware and software inside our leading products to stay ahead of the game all the while making accessibility and costefficient devices our priority. As it stands, our biggest competitor would be Samsung, their smartphones are beginning to cover the gap but if we continue with our plan, we should maintain the lead and even extend it to a greater length. Incorporating the new A13 chip in our smartphone devices truly proved worth it as we saw our highest beginning quarter profits to date. Applying the A13 chip along with 5G to applicable devices boosted our quarterly earnings up 35 percent. “Our December quarter business performance was fueled by double-digit growth in each product category, which drove all-time revenue records in each of our geographic segments and an all-time high for our installed base of active devices,” said Luca Maestri, a perfect example of consumer utility, in which the consumer found the product easier to use and enjoyed using it. Previously our variable cost for producing the chips that go into our devices were capped at $145m, but with the upgrading processing speed and the smaller size, that variable cost has risen to a substantial $225m instead. With the upgraded software we have no choice but to raise our fixed cost of the iPhone up to balance out the variable cost. According to macrotrends.net, our annual operating expenses had a 6.11% increase from 2019 to 2020. Our price elasticity of demand, advertising elasticity of demand, and income elasticity of demand has increased since the last annual quarter (advertising has increased substantially as most of our Q4 sales came from international sales). Speaking on terms of cash flow, we at Apple have also contributed vastly to the not-forprofit side of the economy. Not only did we agree to match our employees’ donations and volunteer hours, but we made sure that any donations made through the Apple Pay system would be hassle free by not requiring users to enter their billing, shipping, or contact details. Based on the results of the previous quarters alone, I feel that as the company grows as does the chance for the non-profits to grow as well. Data shows that increasing advertising and spending more resources internationally benefitted Apple substantially then just focusing on the home turf. According to the press release back on January 21 st of this year, International sales accounted for 64 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Putting more effort into a costefficient device would not only account for more sales, but a higher consumer approval rate of the product (demand increases as would supply in this case). Based on those findings Apple working towards expanding their international reach would allow for their firm to grow even larger and increase their market share to an even greater amount.
